257 Days
by YellowFlicker
Summary: ...and the next 39 [post 4.15 fic, with the occasional flashback / inspired by David Leviathan's 'A Lover's Dictionary']
1. Alone

You're not a fan of abstraction, you never have been. You were always better with the things you could get your hands on, work with. Things you could see as they changed and, as they changed, they affected you. (She thinks that's why you weren't really a fan of college. You think you were just a slob who didn't care enough to do the work and were far more curious about finding that elusive limit to hit that would actually have a bigger effect than slight annoyance)

But now night is coming and the space around you is echoing in that way you know so well, of silence fractured by the loud thoughts in your head, ghosts spanning years and all the worst canned worms spilling through it (every shade of every mistake you ever made is carnivorous, it eats at you and it would be so funny how you destroy your own happiness like this. You're your worst enemy, you poor scared asshole, you coward)- and now… now you have to live with abstraction. You have to learn love as abstraction where before it was two bodies in the same bed. You wait the on-setting fever of exhaustion with dread.

You know there will be no sleep. That's not why you're here. There can be no rest when your chest is buzzing like a beehive and your hideous thoughts keep advancing like the army of the dead. Step by step, you wade through catastrophe and you know even though you can't let yourself feel it yet, that this is destruction, in you, around you. So you sit on the edge of that bed and try to pry apart the silence of a hollow space from the absence of the sounds she used to make tiptoeing around it.

Of course you think about her, you can't escape it. Your head is incessant. You hands are sweating, your eyes burn but you think about her so hard you wonder if you could call her into being just this one way.

You know you can't. (the dead would have risen long ago to be by your side if you could call back everyone you've lost just by the sheer force of loving them, missing them)

You must embrace abstraction instead. This foreignness you never took to. You must embrace the idea of rest, the idea of silence. The idea of her. Leaving. (you shattered something beautiful with your own hands – they bleed of it, but all you want is the shards to go deeper)

Does it hurt?

(not enough. not enough. not enough. not enou/


	2. Regret

Doubt in you is to be found like black holes are searched for in the sky. Seeking the darkness for a different darkness, finding the spots that swallow the light and break it. You find doubt when the hopes your strung together like pearls start dropping in the void. You find them and suddenly they're big enough to swallow whole galaxies, eat you whole.

And it's a little like tripping on a false step: that instant feeling of falling, your heart soaring in your throat. The betrayal you never expected but that you could have seen had you paid attention.

Oh, how it hurts to relearn doubt. the burning at the back of your neck, like too much sun, the bitter taste of the humiliation of that incessant voice: you know better. You know better! It's not real, not always; it's not this big monster your hurt is blowing it into… but still, there are times that you doubt.

There are times you are afraid and simply just too weary of tapping that fear on the shoulder and staring it in the face. (why is it easier to do that when it's violence, when it's death? why is it so easy for you to risk yourself, when you wrap your heart up so tight you could just cut off all its circulating blood, for fear of a single bruise? why?) There are times that you regret…. everything. Every link of the chain and the space in between. Everything you gave and everything he took and all the wasted time you spent on this[1].

There are times you wish you'd never met.


	3. Insufficient

You don't really remember what that fight was about. You know it must have been something stupid, something without real meaning in your lives. But the way you argue really differentiate between what salad to chose and whether or not you two should buy a house. You can't. You don't know how to half ass anything and that in you is compulsive.

It didn't matter that homework wasn't a competition you had to have the best made paper. It never mattered that you weren't ever going to be a runner, you always had to win every race. It didn't matter that hacking into a federal agency can get you thrown in a hole and forgotten it was ever there - you have to give it all whatever you have your hands on.

You don't know how to lose. You life hasn't wired you for it. You grew up thinking loss was the abyss you didn't want to fall into. Every victory was a rose thrown into it, in deference to the monster that didn't swallow you. (Your life a constant fight to revenge yourself against every sneer, every dismissive glance and systemic negligence, a victory for every single you've felt lacking… your life a campaign against **yourself** and that small speck of doubt embedded in your sinews, like the empty spot in the middle of a huge diamond that never left you feel good enough, no matter how hard you tried)

You don't know how to lose, and you forget to stop arguing, even when it doesn't matter.

And if you passed and traded with your dainty feet on the hurt feelings of others, well that was most times a matter of indifference to you. (shame, shame, careless girl. where did you learn such cruelty?) But you learned to love tender, you learned to accept gentleness and forget how it feels to be suspicious of it… and it softened your heart so much that now you can no long bear it. And you find this out when his face gives in surprise and the hurt flickers there a moment so quick you might have missed it. Because suddenly the tug of war is over: you won. but the weight gives and all the extra rope is hurdling towards you. You won, but you ended up with your knees in the mud and burns on your hands[1].

(25 years after you were born, you learn to finally say 'it. I'm sorry i fought so hard. You see, i have an incurable disease; horrible really: i don't know how to lose without falling on my face.)


	4. Inquietude

It's Digg that notices it first - the jarring difference between them. ( _ _he recognizes it because it's familiar, the moment he sees the hard line of Felicity's shoulders, before she even opens her mouth__ )

It starts subtly, in the pauses of Oliver's speech when he talks to Felicity, that look on his face, like he has an open wound somewhere beneath his clothes he hasn't told them about. The way he so subtly seems to brace for an indefinable something to batter him violently every time he so much as glances Felicity's way. And the jarring absence when this expectation is not fulfilled, that makes him flinch. There always was something loaded in their silences, but this is different. It's like a morbid déjà vu, actually - whole year almost, of subtle violence wrapped in silence. Of slow-motion heartbreak and dark spiraling, trying to draw from the edge a man who thought he was already over it. Felicity's old disappointment is missing this time. That hurt beneath the anger, the snowball of emotion that will floor you – that which Oliver probably is expecting – is not there. No place for the bitterness of a half-curled smile on her face this time, like she's angry at herself for being hurt yet again when she should know better. ( _ _this time she probably thought she didn't have to brace or know why, Digg recons. She hit the ground at a thousand yards and didn't even see it coming. Digg knows how that feels__.)

He watches them navigate themselves careful of the gaping hole on the ground between them. Watches the way Oliver keeps expecting it to widen and swallow the whole room while Felicity steadily pretending it's not there ( _ _strait-backed and dead-voiced, she is simmering. He's never seen Felicity do that before and doesn't fault Oliver for dreading it__ )

And then comes the shattering silence in the lair when she's not there and neither is Oliver and Digg knows that, wherever they are it's happening – whatever 'it' is. ( _ _he has a feeling he knows what. He has a feeling he'll have to check in with both of them soon. A knowing look with laurel and they're already decided. She'll take Felicity, Digg will take Oliver and then switch__ )

He's only halfway wrong. ( _ _Laurel calls him telling him Felicity's nowhere to be found almost the same moment that Felicity's message chirps on his phone, asking for space and to 'please stop by the loft later and check on Oliver'__ )

And that's how Digg knows. He doesn't really need the wreck on Oliver's face to tell him, or the three hours they spend in silence, just sitting. He doesn't really need anyone to tell him anything.


	5. Jealousy

Jealousy like the stretch-marks of longing grown too much for a single body to contain. Jealousy like the sly feeling gnawing at your insides, because you know irrationality when it stares you in the face, but it doesn't matter. Jealousy like being angry at a piece of sky of being able to hold her in its teeth while you can't cross five feet of distance from one corner of the room to another. Jealousy for her heels, her friends, her dress, allowed to peek at her slow walk, her smile, her eyes.

Jealousy for people who can look at her and not be ashamed of their own skin and all the pieces it contains.

Finally, anger – finally! For having given up


	6. Cannibalism

You have history of violence on your skin. She has just history. Transcripts of the moment of her life before you that you want to soak yourself into. The little freckles that the sun brings out, so shy but so cute dusting over her nose, her cheeks. The little mark behind knee from that time she fell from the bars during PA. 'It doesn't count as a scar, there weren't even stitches' The birthmark in the very middle of her back, right where when she's most sensitive, almost half an inch wide and shapeless.

The marks you sucked on her skin, the red patches where you kissed too long and bear the mark of you. This brief history so satisfying to read. Little innocent blemishes. You love every single one of them because it could never be replicated on anyone else.

(Happiness has a secret that nobody ever mentions. You know this from the beginning, you who used to be so ashamed of being happy, until you could ease into it. Happiness has a dark side. People think it eventually end and that's where misery starts but it's not quite right. nothing ever goes to waste in this universe – it just changes shape. And happiness… happiness is carnivorous and it will sink you teeth into you when you least expect it. Misery is not quite a state of being, not always. This misery it's the sting you feel when flesh tears from bone when happiness pulls and feeds itself on you. A macabre celebration.

And you float along the current, don't even try to fight it – the very waves of it know you earned this – as you mind turns on itself like little piranhas that gnaw at you limb after limb. To the bone.

You keep floating.)


	7. Unshakable

That first night you spent in your bed.

You house feeling smaller because he took up so much room. Your own body feeling pulled tight against your aching skeleton because there was just so much to feel and not enough space to let it loose. Him, wide and heavy in your bed, tipping the mattress, pulling you closer by sheer rules of gravity. His body riddled with bruises, with scars, hands wide and warm and everywhere. That frenzy of being alone and together again, safe after the storm. Alive.

That kiss right on your doorstep, before you even closed the door behind him. The thump of his bag falling to the floor before his arms were around you. Kissing him with a soft touch of lips, breathless and helpless, of balance in that moment, before you regain you footing and grab the back of his neck, kiss him for all you're both worth, his back against the door, your hair wrapped in his fist as he slows you down, smooths you out. Gentle pull of your body to his, one long caress along your back, palm flat between your shoulderbades, over your restless, tamburene heart. And kissing with your eyes open and shiny, kisses that taste of hurt and of promises, soothing kisses, his tongue in your mouth, his heart in your palm. Proof of life kisses.

His hands framing your face, gentle brushes of his thumb along your cheekbones. He doesn't evne need to say the words 'Im sorry'. It's right there in his eyes, brimming with emotion, so strong that it makes you fingers curl around his wrist and your breath catch. You almost look away. Almost.

You can't find quiet yet, but you do find sense. You pull him by the hand, walk to your room. He walks just half a step behind you, fingers linked together.

You're not quite in your bedroom again before he tugs your hand, you turn, and he kisses you again. Calmer this time, gentler. You give yourself over. You let everything heavy between you go and catch his lips instead, and there it is… just there. The cresect scar on the roof of his mouth.

If love were anything tangible it would be in his mouth and the way he says your name and makes it sound like the whole sky is talking[1].

It's there, staining every part of you again, between one breath and another, so new. So brave. ( _ _brave enough to let this breathe, to let this be. To open your heart to him again even after the last time he held it in his first hard enough to bloody his hands. Brave enough to know that you'd do terrible things for love and still be able to live with yourself, sleep at night. Brave enough to realizes that this is also madness, and isn't that what love really is? Heavy in your head so you don't feel it's boot on your chest__ _ _[2]__.)

Not a word of all that goes unspoken needed to be said that night, though. Exhaustion was more pressing. So you guide him by your bed, peel away his clothes with careful hands and kiss as you go because you're human and can only hold back so much ( _ _kiss him once for every 23 times you want to. That should settle it, you think__ ). Kiss him shallow, so he doesn't strat thinking you want to take it places, no matter how much you want to, how heavy the blood in your veins feels and how hot your need is between your thighs. Lust can wait. His pale face and the deep dark circles under his eyes can't.

You lay down side by side and watch each other, waiting to fall asleep.

He slept. You watched.

You don't know why, if it's his breathing or his legs close to yours or the space he takes up in the bed that never saw another body but your own. You've forgotten what it is to sleep with someone – in truth you've always known you sleep better on your own.

But his hand is between you, loosle fingers around your own hand. You want to kiss his scarred knuckes, the moment your eyes land tehre. The lines of his face are sucha sore sight, exhausted even in sleep. You're hurting over every inch of him so close, and you don't even know why.

You take it all in, slowly. You wonder if you're going to make it. You decide that you will, because you want to. You want this. You've never been one to walk away from something just because it's hard work anyway.

' _ _All you have to do is want me back. All you have to do is want this just as much. I'll be here. I'l fight for this as hard as I ever founght for anything__.'

* * *

[1] Caitlyn Siehl, __Tasting the Moon__

[2] This i salso from a poem i recently read but that cannot find yet – source to come soon.


	8. Livid

That first week alone in a hotel room It's elegant and tasteful. It could be a shot from a magazine, the way it oozes its impersonal charm from every corner.

You hate it with every fiber of your being but you're too tired to go elsewhere.

That first night alone in a big bed when you couldn't stop tossing and turning, feeling like that empty space beside you was going to swallow you whole.

The spark of anger in your chest, at yourself.

Fuck you. You used to sleep alone just fine.

You end up on the couch anyway, stewing your resentment away. It's easier than looking what's beneath it in the face.

Your first week alone, avoiding everyone.

You know you won't be able to stand the looks on their faces, like you're something fragile. Like you're made for kid gloves. Fuck that. You have work to do. You have a biostimulant to mass-produce and make cheap and affordable. You have a revolution building. You big brain can gnaw on that instead. (you hardly realize how people stop talking to you as much, how they part for you when you walk by. How the formality creeps back in everyone's voices with an edge of carefulness because you've become harsher than you intended and you didn't even realize. You forgot to remind yourself of everyone else's pace – and steady your own. that comes later)

That first time you woke in the middle of the night because you were in such pain you were crying and you could hardly move. There are consequences to working 14 hours. Fuck that!

That other time when out of the blue, with no respect for you boundaries and your needs, you're reminded of the night when he traced a line with the tip of his finger, from the top of your head down to your forehead, your nose, your lips, your chin and neck and spread his palm wide over the center of your chest. And how it surprised you, that gesture. You never asked him why.

It surprises you into tears now, and you melt into them for the first time. Heavy sobs that shake your body so hard you have to sit down. The more you try to hold them back the more they stifle you, like hands around your throat. Everything comes pouring and you know, you know there is no holding this back so you give in. You cry and cry, with loud sobs and there it is. After a good 30 minutes of it you're left hollow and exhausted but the tears are gone.

And that's enough of that.

The first time you realize how many voicemail messages you have in your inbox – you ignore them. By the tenth time you open them. ('I love you. I'm sorry.' 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you.' 'I didn't want to lose you. I'm sorry.' I' was scared, I'm sorry.' A long deep inhale after the beep of the fifth message, a long deep sigh, and then the lines falls) And just like that you're angry again. Because you look up, away from the picture of his face on your phone and catch a glimpse of the devastation on your face.

You take it out on the phone – hurl it against the mirror. The shattering sound of it is satisfying and for some reason it just builds the fire. You grab the case filled with pens by the nightstand and hurl it at the wall. And it's boiling. You break everything that isn't nailed on the floor. The destruction feels good. It feels accurate. For the first time in 14 days this stupid room reflects you.

You take out the rage on the wall, on the mirror, on the furniture.

I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU, YOU ASSHOLE, YOU FUCKER, I LOVE YOU

You check out the morning after, litany of 'fuck you' in your head meeting the look the clerk gives you. It's transparent enough on your face that nobody speaks a word to you for at least two more days.

Fuck that too.


	9. Desolation

You preferred anger a lot more to this… this hollowness. This numbness stretching like a think protective layer over ever corner of you. Soon it starts filling your veins with lead.

You know it's time to grieve the loss – grieve for this hurt you feel, pulling at you from the deepest corner you didn't even know could hurt - when you can't think of a single reason to get out of bed one Sunday. You must. You must find a way to get through this and learn to live again, even though you feel like you have no stomach for it anymore.

Grief… grief is too heavy and hot on your chest to contemplate yet, but it just won't leave you alone.

Grief is remembering everything good that was and have it crumbling like burnt paper between your fingers. Grief is holding the truth like a face between the palms of your hands and seeing the truth for what it is: a plain face, no charming smile, no stunning eyes. It's admitting that at least half of what's on that face belongs to you. At least half – if not more – of what you're paying for now, was your own doing.

Grief – oh god, shame - is knowing that you peeled back your layers: clothes, skin and bones and showed him all beneath, saying 'here, touch me. I know now that you won't hurt me'. It's realizing that your faith in what you shared was as unthinking as his lack of it. Grief is merciless; it's facing your own obliviousness: of all the things you thought could go wrong, you never thought that would be it. (he's trusted you with his life for years, trusted you with his secrets, with the lives of thousands. Trusted you to make the right call, to fight him when he was making the wrong one. The first real thing he ever said to you was 'you can trust me'… and that's how memories scatter like broke glass all over the floor and you start walking them. This isn't the first time he didn't trust you, remember?) Everything you gave - all the pieces that you sowed between the two of you, thinking it was a sanctuary - were as deliberate as all the things he didn't.

Oh, grief… it's knowing that probably half the things in your head right now aren't even true, but it doesn't stop them from spreading like vines. Doesn't stop the hurting. You're just so tired of always looking for a reason; so exhausted by the need to go into every corner and explain, because once you explain something, it can be explained away.

Not this.

The hurt you still feel is too permanent a stain. (you let him in too deep, that's why. In too tender places. Places that hadn't seen human touch and warmth in years, maybe ever. And you let him in. Maybe that was the reason you could forgive it last year: he wasn't nearly as capable of destroying you then. But you can't forgive all the internal bleeding he is causing you now.) You don't even know all the shades of your emotions yet, you don't want to rationalize this away. You don't want to explain it. Fuck explaining. This hurts.

It's hurts and it feels so fucking lonely. You thought you were together in that place that felt so safe, but it was just you playing make believe in a decrepit house, and isn't that the story of your life right there. A lie you repeated to yourself and the funny thing: you were the only one to believe it, because you wanted it to be true so much.

You were foolish and it hurts. This will never change.

'It was a mistake.' Laurel says one night, helpless and worried about you sitting on her bed, too raw to even cry, stealing all her pretty lilac covers. 'People make mistakes, Felicity.'

And you agree.

'Yes.' you want to say. 'It was. But the mistake was mine for trusting him[1].'

* * *

[1] David Leviathan 'A Lover's Dictionary'


	10. Panic

Nightmares come with unpredictable frequencies – they still do. Probably always will. There is no real pattern there, anything can set them off. (they've been celebrating all over your tired bones these days, so much so that you're relearning what it meant for you to look at the bed and feel you stomach drop cause you were afraid of it.

One more reason to sleep on the couch)

You used to wake in the middle of the night when you were traveling with her too, scared and disoriented and oh, you'd be so ashamed when you woke her up, but sometimes… sometimes you'd make yourself get over that quickly and let yourself melt into her. Sometimes, when it was so bad that you knew a run wouldn't clear your head, when it was her that you had nightmares about, or the dungeons of Nanda Parbat, or the fall, or… sometimes you didn't hold yourself back when she'd stretch her arms towards you, offering safe harbor. Offering comfort and oblivion both.

But here's what you never told her: there were times when you'd wake up cold and coiling violence about you like a vicious spring ready to snap, and it was moments long as lifetimes that you spent trapped between sleep and wakening, with a nightmares claws were so deep into the pain still echoed. And during those times, when you scanned the room and sensory overload hit you so hard you'd shake, it always split your blood when you saw her sleeping so peacefully right next to a man that was coiling his muscles to kill something, if anything touched you.

She slept next to that.

And here's the secret: in the hours that it took you to calm down, you would lay down with your face inches from hers and try to remember why you were there still. Because these were the times when you would be completely convinced that you had to end this immediately. That you would be right in doing it.

But those moments would pass, the fear would ebb and your body and your mind would start belonging to you again, and you'd realize that things weren't as bad as those breathless moments before the nightmare has receded. That the worst as behind you and it couldn't claw at you anymore. That you were still breathing and she was lying next to you and this was real. It's was real as anything in your life had ever gotten and even though this never made you less afraid, you could usually remember immediately why you and her and distance no bigger than an inch between your bodies in the same bed, always felt worth it.

So you'd sit there and breathe some more, and let that deeply rooted survival instinct recede, because you knew, instincts sometimes are reverberations of old hurts whispering lies at you, and nothing more. They're not always real. (they're not death anymore, not now. That's over. it's behind you. It's done. No reason to dwell on it anymore. You're better now. You're someone worth loving)

(mostly, you were lying to yourself there. That too is true. Nothing was behind you. Everything bad that ever happened to you reigns within the thick walls of your skull. You'll never outrun it. Never. It's time you learned that)

You used to think those days, that you were braver than you ever had been. That you life, it was happening now the way it was always supposed to happen, and you measured every moment of happiness that brushed by you, savoring it. …hoping against hope you wouldn't have to measure everything else against it. As it turns out, you must.


	11. Deep-Sated

It's not as simple as voices in your ear. This is just something you know. It's knowledge that is laid in your foundation, that blankets years. Bits and pieces of it leach out of everything you do. It's illustrated in detail by the consequences of everything you've survived: you're just not good enough for some things and this is a truth that cannot be outrun no matter how hard you try.

(damaged is not the word. It implies possibility for repair. There isn't. Fucked up is what you are. A fraction, not a person. Been one for so long that you just don't know the fucking difference. Just stop! Stop trying!)

Also true: you're in pieces and the way you think about things is wrong and you shouldn't even be allowed to hold on to people because you're jagged glass: you hurt them. You keep them close because you're selfish, you need people to love you, to think you're better so you have a reason to believe it yourself, but it's not true and you just keep hurting people. Good people, who don't deserve your bullshit.

True: You will never get past this. Never! Accept it. This will never be fixed or be over. You'll never be better, no matter what changes. No matter how you life shifts.

…No matter who you're with or how much you love.

Loved…

Knowledge like this – facing it, finally, without doubt or second chances, without false illusions - is what makes everything else into a farce: people play along to you trying to be better, but there is no such thing. You've always known this, deep in the silent places where you can't lie to yourself (in the places where your every hope goes to die). You've always known that everyone is just playing along. Just like you've always known that one day they'll just stop.

(She has. Several times. Leaving you in the dust trying to catch up and not knowing how.)

Everyone has their breaking point after all. It just hurts to be the place they all break against.

This is undoubtedly your fault though. You know that too. And not just because you lied.

It's because you promised a life you couldn't give - a promise made by someone who isn't you. Not the real you. The real lie wasn't even about your son. It extends longer than just a mere few months, it goes deeper: you made her think you were someone you aren't. You even believed it yourself, you were so desperate. You tried so hard to build someone worth loving but that's just a façade. A house of cards. It only took one blow of the wind to knock it over.

Of course it would end. She didn't know who she was saying yes to. She was the first person to dare call you a hero, and maybe it would have been true, from arms length, with five feet of distance and no touching between you, but for a desperate hug every now and then. But up close and personal… 'the two of us' you tried to build together never stood a chance, because she doesn't know that she was sleeping every night with a figment of both your imaginations. In truth you are who you've always been: a sack of dark oozing shit in an expensive suit.[1] The shade of it doesn't matter. Doesn't change the inside of you.

Learn this. Accept it.

Be at peace with it.

Truth: You were never meant for more.

[1] Jessica Jones, Ep. 13: Smile


	12. Incessant

12.

You don't love me as much as I love you.

You don't love me as much as I love you.

You don't love me as much as I love you [1].


	13. Basic

An: for the sake of the love I have for this ship and characters, I'm going to pretend that that last scene in 4.15 where Felicity simply stop mid-sentence into one of the most important conversations of her life, and then just gets up and walks away without even finishing talking… yeah, I'm gonna pretend that didn't happen. I just… please, allow me this indulgence. It's so fucking stupid it hurts me.

* * *

When your phone chimes with her ringtone, you swear your heart drops. You get so distracted you don't dodge and Diggle clocks you right in the face.

He looks apologetic immediately, but you're already moving to your phone, one side of your face feeling hot and the other ice cold.

You pick up on the third ring. You get ready to say hello. To say her name. Anything. But once the line is open, the drowning takes and you can't form any words. You don't know what to say even as your heart keeps bouncing between your ribs and your spine, blood pounding in your ears so loud you think you might not hear her when she speaks (if she speaks) so you push the phone against your ear harder.

But you don't know what to say and silence seems as oppressive as the push of water 10 feet under the surface.

"Hey."

You angle the phone away just a bit as you take in a harsh breath.

"Hey."

You've known many kinds of silences in your life. The kinds that hurt and need to be filled. The kinds that are heavy with fear and every sound that cuts through them is a jump up your spine. You've known silence for days, having uttered no word for weeks. You've known all that.

You've also known silence can be comfort. It can mean togetherness of purpose, of understanding. It can be that you can be left alone without needing to be alone. Silence that never feels like it needs to be filled with anything, because everything needed can be said with a look.

With her you've known silence that falls at the end of a night you've spent talking till dawn.

Of all these kinds – this is different.

"Felicity."

This silence needed to be broken. You couldn't take it. The questions swarmed the inside of your skin, pushing and you just couldn't let it be. (one call and you forget all that you told yourself you needed to learn. You're so easy, really. Hopeless)

(truly so – all that you feel, all that bursts in your head is right there in your voice and the way you say her name. you wish you could teach yourself another way, but there simply hasn't been enough time to unlearn that)

She's less careful than you are. Less practiced maybe: you hear the sharp breath she takes, the sound the phone makes when she puts it down heavily and just leaves it there.

You close your eyes, hand gripping the back of your neck as you sit down. She hasn't hung up yet. You won't either.

"I stood up today."

She says it hastily, her voice almost toneless. Like she's crossing off a chore from the list.

It hits you like a brick to the back of your head. Literally takes your breath away. If you hadn't been sitting, the impact of those words would have made you lose your balance. The floor shifts enough as it is.

"Oliver?"

You open your mouth but nothing comes out. Your eyes are burning and this time you know it's not from exhaustion. You feel like you have to swallow down your whole heart that is trying to clog your throat just so you can say something.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm here, I just… You…"

It worked. The farfetched miracle born of an insane idea of a genius with too many flunked inventions worked. And you missed it.

Felicity's incredulous laugh comes at bit choked, a bit like she can hardly believe it.

"Yeah." And this time her little sniffle isn't even subtle and you find yourself rubbing at your chest just a little bit because the hurt is so real your instinct is to try to soothe It away. But you can't.

"I mean, it was for like, three seconds so it's not like I walked." You can practically see her roll her eyes at herself, ever so impatient, shaking her head and twisting her lips in a little moue of displeasure. You can see her so clearly you have to close your eyes. "And it actually hurt a bit, but that's normal apparently…"

"What?" You straighten in your chair, tense and halfway to getting up to go to her before you remember you can't.

You clear your throat. "Are you…are you okay?"

You hear her take another deep breath. She's bracing.

"Yeah."

Didn't brace enough. Her voice shakes.

"Yeah, I'm ok." She repeats. Every emotion in her voice brushes up against you like a warm hug and you let your head fall forward, push the phone against your ear harder.

"Okay."

"I'm sorry I called, I just…" You shake your head and close your eyes, pass a hand over your face. "I know that we're… and that I was the one that…" you can actually hear her jaw snap shut and you know she's pursing her lips hard, angry at herself. "I just wanted you to know. I know you'd want to know."

"I'm glad you called." You've never been more glad in your fucking life, but that's another story. You adjust your voice to match her whisper without even noticing you're doing it. You speak your next words with all the solemn gratitude you are capable of. "Thank you for telling me."

(and you think back at that morning maybe four months ago, when she finally made an omelet that she didn't burn to a crisp and called you immediately, squealing, probably jumping a little up and down. and you remember that warmth that flooded your veins when you realized that being the first person she wanted to talk to when something happened to her was the best gift you've ever been given and the most basic form of love)

"I'm really happy for you, Felicity."

You really are. Happy doesn't even begin to describe it. The weight that lifts from your shoulders is so tangible that for a moment you're shocked. You don't realize what's wrong with you, what changed. You don't realize the guilt, the misery it entailed, had been so heavy, so real, that the absence of it surprises you and throws you of balance, before you understand that this thing you're feeling – it's what being is like when, your mistakes aren't having you for dinner.

"I have to go now."

You nod. The tears in her voice are as real as the ones swimming in your eyes and you already know this phone call lasted too long as it is.

"Okay."

"Bye."

"Bye Felicity."

You sit on her chair for a while after and only move when Digg comes by with an icepack and a glass of whiskey. You take both.


	14. Merciless

AN: this is happening (being thought?) sometime after the season 4 finale. It's a sort of resistance to reconciliation, I suppose.

* * *

She'd love to say it was something like déjà vu but it wasn't. Not really. It had never been like this. Never felt anything like this.

There had been a time when she used to look at him and _want_ , indulging in her harmless crush; and then later, in the dazing possibility of the 'two of them', something unknown and so enthralling. Little flirting here and there, smiles and just tipping on the edge of possibility, the call of the free-fall more inebriating than any alcohol had never been. But back then, when she used to look at him from the corner of the room, when touch had been possible one because of caution ( _safe-zones_ : _hands, arms, sometimes his face, not for too long_ ) she had never had _memories_ of him pressing against her back with all the cumulative weight of reality. Memories of them together, before it fell apart.

No longer a possibility; reality was a live creature, not the whispy dream behind rosy glasses. It was unforgiving. It was looking at him and being slapped with the acute knowledge of secret things about him that came to her at the most importune times. Intimate things she missed with physical ache. Memories that were live things inside her too, eating away. Of the weight of his arm around her waist and the feel of his lips; of the exact shade of his every emotion on his face, his voice; the confused mumblings early in the morning and the slow blinks, lids heavy with sleep after a night spent just talking. The grounding feeling of waking up with each other the next day.

Memories…

History lived between them now, sharpening the edge of longing, turning it into a sword without a hilt. It hurt to want, it made her feel weak-willed and almost verging on self-destructive. It made her afraid. It sparked anger at herself that little else could. She hated setbacks, always had. She'd never had patience with failure when failure was her own.

And every time she felt that way, she remembered it could be easier. She could have left; she could still leave. There was a reason why Felicity always physically moved away from the places that she wanted to leave behind. She was not the detached kind. She was the suppressing kind. She shoved her wounds away, deep inside where their screams didn't echo all the way to the surface. It was the only way she could breathe. She was a slow healer, scared to go anywhere near anything that hurt, until it stopped hurting quite as much. Slowly and subtly, she dismantled on her own ghosts, one piece at a time, but only when they had aged a little. Only after once they slowed, and their hunger for her calmed. When they quieted and didn't howl so loud that the only way to survive and be heard was for her to howl with them, louder.

But there had been no leaving this time. Nowhere to go and not even a desire to do so. She had found her life and her purpose and she wanted to live it, despite everything that just made her want to erase herself from the narrative, leave the ashes of her destruction behind and bloom again someplace else.

There was selfishness in that. Cowardice too. Felicity had been okay with both. But she'd wanted something else more. Despite everything, she liked her life. She wanted to keep it. ( _leaving would have meant leaving behind… and she didn't want to do that. She had lost too much to be where she was. She didn't want to cover up her scars. She'd earned them. Now she wanted them to show._ )

She'd just had to… reframe her life, a little bit. So she had. And Oliver had, too.

Distance had felt… it had felt like opening up an infected wound without anesthesia, but that had been exactly what she'd wanted. What she'd needed. A merciless act, to safe what was still salvageable.

Space. ( _space to bleed in private_ )

The truth was, they worked better as friends. Partners. That was for the best. ( _they didn't have as much leverage to hurt each other, that way_ ).

But it wasn't as easy being around him all the time. She didn't remember how to love from a distance anymore. ( _She'd never let herself admit to love for so long for exactly that reason. She was simply no good at it_.) It wasn't as easy reminding herself that there were things she could not do anymore. Sometimes she forgot.

Sometimes they felt like two bodies propped against a chair and a doorway, waiting for something to happen.

When these moments of heavy silence came, Felicity never said anything. It was like holding her breath underwater felt, but she would not be the one to break this. She wasn't even sure she wanted to. ( _she'd long lost the courage to do it_.)

There were times she didn't remember why not, though, and when she stopped to ask herself that, there was solace in memory; in history. Of how much the fall had hurt and how it had made her feel like she was dying. ( _those who were born without the ability to feel pain died very soon. Felicity made a lesson – one more brick on her walls – of every wound. Pain with purpose: there was no shame in surviving._ ) If she was merciless, that was because she was so with herself first. And so she reminded herself that there was a reason for what he had done and what he hadn't done and that in the end, all those reasons would accumulate to a very simple truth: she had not been enough. Not enough for him to trust. Not enough to be let in.

That was okay. I didn't mean anything, it was nobody's fault. They were simply not good enough for each other. It hurt, but that was life.

And that was the rock all those simmering moments would break against. When he looked at her in silence form the other end of the lair, with eyes that pressed against her back hard enough to leave a mark – she would remember. And when they spent too much time in his office talking about different policies and wage gaps and reconstruction of different parts of the city, she would remind herself again. When she accidentally caught sight of him training, or rolling his shoulders, or fucking eating, whatever, and her blood would feel hot enough to melt glass, she would remember.

 _It happened. It was good, (_ it was the best you've ever felt, ever had _) but then it was the worst you've lived through. It was great, and then it hurt and now it's over. For a_ reason _. Remember._ Be _afraid. There is no shame in surviving_


End file.
